Just thinking ... I wonder if Lorenzo
Lamas can tell the difference between his father and Ricardo
Montalban.

There is something I really like
about these Snakeeater movies. They are low budget movies, and they
are quite bad. This film looks bad,
the acting is awful, and the budget was about zero. It's like a
low-budget Canadian ripoff of a Hal Needham movie with higher
violence levels and some nudity. Yet the
filmmakers manage to create a certain kind of watchable grade-Z
entertainment by realizing everything is awful, and not taking it
seriously.

For the record, Lorenzo Lamas plays
Snakeater, a former Special Forces guy who is now a cop, but gets
suspended in every one of the three films, because he breaks the
rules, dammit. Once his superior takes his badge and gun, Lamas
always takes on some high-minded crusade of his own. His character is a blend of
Burt Reynolds and Charles Bronson. Like Bronson, he is always ready
for bloody vigilante justice. Unlike the serious Bronson, but in the Reynolds
tradition, he drinks a lot of beer, gets in a lot of bar fights,
drives a lot of fast vehicles, and battles the bad guys with quips,
insults, and snide remarks.

In this particular Snakeeater
adventure, the Snakemeister's crusade was
rescuing his own sister from some hillbillies who kidnapped her after
killing his parents. That sounds like a pretty serious matter, but
have no fear that it will become a tragedy. Snakeeater gets through
it all with martial arts and sarcasm. He treats the guys who
slaughtered his parents with the same jokey disdain he would use for
somebody who cheated in a bar fight.

In order to battle various toothless
rejects from the Deliverance auditions, Lamas must journey deep into
the tropical jungles of Canada, where the hillbillies are generic
Southerners, but the cops speak with heavy New Jersey accents. Go
figure. The Canadian swamp hillbillies kick
Lorenzo's ass, he kicks back with various forms of -Fu, and so forth until a bloody ending leaves
our hero standing proud. Along the way he meets some naked chicks.
The end.

Well, not quite the end.

After the plot is completely
resolved, there is a comical scene in which Snakeeater, back on the
force, captures Horshack the Arsonist. This scene has
absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie, and is
completely anti-climactic after the bloody and tragic gun battle.
In Snakeeater's corner are two cops, one of whom is played by former
Miami Dolphin running back Larry Csonka. Horshack was supposed to have Screech and Mr Kotter
in his corner,
but nobody showed.

Given the presence of Csonka and Horshack, I've
deduced that the purpose of this scene must be to present a perfectly
realized example of advanced Stanislavsky acting technique. By the
way, compared to that other cop, Csonka's performance seemed like
Kenneth Branagh in Henry V.

Csonka and his partner always complain that the boys
at HQ don't show them any respect. Here's my advice, boys. Ditch the
lavender colored police car.

The
Critics Vote

no major reviews online

The People
Vote ...

IMDB summary.
IMDb voters score it 3.5/10. Yes, it is that bad, but
enjoyably bad.

The meaning of the IMDb
score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics,
or a C- from our system.
Films rated below five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one
and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is.

My own
guideline: A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. C means it will only
appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover
appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but
will be considered excellent by genre fans, while
C- indicates that it we found it to
be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable). D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre. F means that the film is not only
unappealing across-the-board, but technically
inept as well. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for
fans of that type of film. Any film rated B- or better is
recommended for just about anyone. We don't score films below C-
that often, because we like movies and we think that most of
them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know
that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below
C-.

Based on this description, this
movie could be called an F. It looks bad, the acting is awful,
and the budget was about zero. I've decided to say it is a C-,
based upon its "bad movie" entertainment value. I actually
enjoyed watching it.